


my own desert places

by orphan_account, race_the_ace



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of past canonical torture, Minor Character Death, Murder, Spoilers through Season 3a, possible ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/race_the_ace/pseuds/race_the_ace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pulls the trigger and blood stains the walls, but none gets on his hands. </p><p>OR </p><p>The one where the Sheriff avenges Stiles’s torture by Gerard Argent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my own desert places

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Notes:  
> \- Went with John for the Sheriff’s first name because the show sucks and apparently the Stilinskis don’t get first names. Whatever.  
> \- Title from _Desert Places_ by Robert Frost.  
>  \- Posted under the wrong name earlier, so I orphaned it from that account and added this one as a co-author, which is why it looks weird. Mea culpa with that one.

*****

On one hand it’s a relief to know that Stiles isn’t mixed up in gangs or drugs or--or what the fuck ever John had been thinking his son was messed up in. On the other hand nothing about the supernatural is anything John wants Stiles near. 

He gives Stiles a few days to try and put himself back together after everything and then John asks. 

The words spill out of Stiles at a hesitant, but constant rate. Sometimes John gets the feeling that Stiles doesn’t even believe all of this has happened, much less that he’s reciting it to his father. 

His words stutter when he talks about Gerard Argent and then Erica and Boyd and Heather and _shit_ Stiles knew over half the people sacrificed and he knew people who weren’t who still died. Every few seconds he glances at John and at first John thought he was trying to gauge how John was taking everything, but now he realizes that’s not what it is. Stiles has been traumatized. _Is_ traumatized. 

He’s checking to make sure John is still there. Still alive. Still breathing. 

John is waiting for the first available night that Stiles spends with Scott to bury himself in a giant glass of whiskey and break down just for a little while. He can’t imagine what Stiles is going through. 

When Stiles gets to the part about being substitute sacrifices, John can’t breathe. Stiles talks about the darkness he feels and the way they’ve probably doomed everyone in Beacon Hills but _fuck it_ , the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, sometimes. This time. 

John wants to shake him and tell him that he would have never wanted Stiles to take this on for him. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because Stiles has been dealing with this longer than John and in the end, they’re both here. John is going to learn how to live with Stiles accepting darkness if it means he keeps his dad. John is going to learn how to be worthy of that, because he sure as hell doesn’t feel worthy of it right now. 

He hasn’t protected Stiles at all. He hasn’t protected this town or its people. He couldn’t protect Claudia. Silently John thinks he was the worst choice of guardian out of the three because he failed everyone. 

When Stiles stops talking, trailing off into nothing, John hugs him and tells him that he’s instituting a daily hug rule, no matter what. Stiles laughs shakily but makes no move to fight it and that tells John more than he can handle.

He leaves Stiles to his computer and his books and goes down to his gun safe. Inside is a .38 Smith & Wesson registered to a John Smith four states over. It’s been scraped clean of identifiable markings, though, and it’s never been fired. 

There’s a difference between vengeance and justice, John knows. After the past few weeks he thinks he’s one of the few who knows better than anyone. Jennifer Blake--or whomever she was--had wanted both. She wanted validity for a wrong doing. Unfortunately she went about it in an entirely too blatant way (and really, John quietly thinks she could have accomplished what she’d set out to do with a little more stealth), and achieved neither. 

John personally thinks the line between vengeance and justice is the law. The law is on the side of justice, vengeance is on the side of the vigilante. As much as Stiles likes Batman, John never has. In fact, John has never liked any superhero. They create false images of law enforcement and the way revenge should be handled. Which is by the law. Justly. 

He slides a new clip into the .38 and wonders if he should be subtler about this. Poison is harder to come by, though, and John knows what he’s doing. Because sedatives are a lot easier to come by. 

Tonight John isn’t a cop. He’s a highly-trained killer with a son who was tortured. 

It’s entirely too easy to get by security at the Sunrise Home for the Elderly. Even easier to make sure no one sees him, ballcap pulled low over his face and brand new clothes that aren’t anything like what he normally wears along with boots with hidden height inserts. He changes his gait and moves his watch to the other wrist to give the impression that he’s left-handed. 

John won’t get caught. One more body on top of all of the rest of them won’t be any kind of news. 

Gerard Argent is sleeping. From what Stiles told him, he might have woken up when John entered his room, but John was quick with the sedative and the sedative is even quicker with that. 

John doesn’t pray for forgiveness or ask for strength. He opens the window, screws on the silencer with gloves and puts it in Argent’s hand. By the time the coroner gets to him, the sedative will be gone--it’s short lived and fast acting, perfect for this. John doesn’t know what else it’s used for, he only knows about it in conjunction with murders. 

He pulls the trigger and blood stains the walls, but none gets on his hands. 

John climbs out the window and shuts it politely behind him. He always thought that when he finally killed a person he’d feel regret or guilt or hatred. Instead he feels relieved and resolved and avenged. 

No one tortures his son and gets the fuck away with it. No one. 

He burns the clothes in a garbage can out in the Preserve and waits until they’re nothing but ashes before he leaves. Tonight, he supposes, he was Batman. 

When Stiles tells him over breakfast that Gerard Argent killed himself, a dazed look on his face, John tells his son the last lie he will ever tell him, “Oh, that’s too bad,” he says. 

It’s all worth it though when Stiles looks at him with just a little more lightness than he had last night. It’s too easy for John to still see the bruising Argent had left on Stiles’s face, too easy to remember the careful way his son walked around for days. 

“Good riddance,” Stiles mumbles around his cereal. When they finish eating, Stiles clambers around the table and gives John a tight hug and says, “Maybe two a day for a while?”

And John--John can live with that. He nods, “Two a day.”

“I love you, dad,” Stiles says quietly. 

“I love you too, son.”

-0-


End file.
